How to sleep better at night - Tips for Healthy

Sleep is one of the strangest things we do every day. Will spend 36% of his life to sleep. For one-third of our time on earth, we move from the active and studied living beings we live throughout the day to slippery sleep.

But what is sleep, exactly? Why is it so important and very appropriate for our bodies and minds? How do you affect our lives when we are awake?

Sleep serves multiple purposes necessary for your mind and body. Let us separate some of the most important.

The first purpose of sleep is restoration. Every day, your brain accumulates in metabolism during its normal nervous activity. While this is quite normal, accumulation of these wastes significantly increases with neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Well, how do we get rid of metabolic waste? Recent research has shown that sleep plays a crucial role in cleaning the brain every night. While these toxins can be eliminated during waking hours, researchers found that removing sleep is as much as two-fold faster than during waking hours.

The way this process works is pretty great:

During sleep, brain cells shrink by 60 percent, allowing the brain's brain removal system, called a glymphatic system, to "take out the garbage" more easily. Results? Your brain is restored during sleep, waking up refreshed and with a clear mind.

The second purpose of sleep is to unify the memory. Sleep is necessary to enhance memory, a process that maintains and strengthens your long-term memories. Insufficient or fragmented sleep can hinder your ability to shape concrete memories (facts and figures) and emotional memories.

Finally, sleep is the ultimate goal of metabolic health. Studies have shown that when you sleep 5.5 hours a night instead of 8.5 hours a night, the little energy you burn comes from fat, while more carbohydrates and proteins come. This can push you to increase fat and lose muscle. In addition, inadequate sleep or abnormal sleep cycles may lead to insensitivity to insulin and metabolic syndrome, which increases the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

All this to say, that better sleep is critical to your mental and physical health. Before we go deeper into this sleep guide, let's pause for just one second. If you enjoy this article about sleep, you may find my other book about human performance and behavior useful. Every week, I share self-improvement tips based on proven research through a free newsletter.

How much sleep do you need?

Well, sleep is very important, but how much sleep you really need it? To answer this question, let us think about an experiment conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Washington State University.

The researchers began this experiment by collecting 48 healthy men and women whose average hours of sleep were seven to eight hours per night. Then divide these topics into four groups. The first group was forced to stay for 3 consecutive days without sleep. The second group slept for 4 hours a night. The third group slept for 6 hours a night. The fourth group grew for 8 hours a night. In these last three groups - 4, 6 and 8 hours of sleep - subjects were put on these sleep patterns for two consecutive weeks. During the experiment, subjects were tested on their physical and mental performance.

That's what happened ...

People who were allowed to sleep for 8 hours showed no significant declines, decreases, or decreased motor skills during the 14-day study. At the same time, groups that received 4 hours and 6 hours of sleep steadily decreased with each passing day. The four-hour group was the worst performer, but the six-hour group was not much better. In particular, there were two remarkable results.

First, sleep debt is a cumulative issue. According to the researchers, sleep religion "has a neurological cost that accumulates over time." After one week, 25% of the six-hour group grew at random times throughout the day. Two weeks later, the six-hour group suffered a performance deficit that was the same as if it had survived for two consecutive days. Let me repeat this: If you get 6 hours of sleep at night for two consecutive weeks, your mental and physical function will drop to the same level as if you were awake for 48 hours continuously.

Second, participants did not notice a decline in performance. When participants rated themselves, they thought their performance declined for a few days and then dropped. In fact, they continued to decline with each day. In other words, we are poor judges for our performance dwindling even as we pass them.

The cost of sleep deprivation

The irony is that many of us suffer from sleep deprivation so we can work more, but low performance spoils any potential benefits of working for extra hours.

In the United States alone, studies have estimated that sleep deprivation costs companies more than $ 100 billion a year in terms of efficiency and performance.

"Unless you do a lot of work that does not require much thought, you spend time awake at the expense of performance," says Gregory Belinky, director of the Center for Sleep and Performance Research at Washington State University.

This leads us to the important question: At what point does debt accumulation begin during sleep? When does the performance decrease when starting the add-on? According to a wide range of studies, the turning point is usually around a 7 or 7.5 hour mark. In general, experts agree that 95 per cent of adults need to sleep from 7 to 9 hours per night to work optimally. Most adults should target eight hours a night. Children, adolescents and the elderly usually need more.

Here is a useful analogy of why sleep is very important.

Cumulative stress theory

Imagine that your health and energy is a bucket of water. In your daily life, there are things that fill your data. Sleep is a key input. These are also things like nutrition, meditation, stretching, laughter, and other forms of recovery.

There are also powers that drain water from your bucket. These are outcomes such as weight lifting or jogging, stress from work or school, relationship problems, or other forms of stress and anxiety.

Learn how to sleep better by mastering the accumulated stress theory.

The forces that drain the bucket are not all negative, of course. To live a productive life, it may be important that some of these things flow from your bucket. Working hard at the gym, at school or in the office allows you to produce something of value. But even positive outcomes are still output and drain your energy accordingly.

These outputs are cumulative. Even a little leak can result in significant loss of water over time.

Keep your bucket full

If you want to keep your data set complete, you have two options.

Refill your bucket on a regular basis. This means making time for sleep and recovery.

Let the pressures in your life pile up and drain your bucket. Once you press your body, it will force you to rest through injury and illness.

Recovery is not negotiable. You can either spend some time relaxing and rejuvenating now or allocating time for illness and injury later. Keep your bucket full.

Well, but can you catch up with sleep?

Additional sleep can cure some negative effects for several nights of bad sleep. A new study found that catching up with sleep on the weekends brought daytime drowsiness and inflammatory levels back to the baseline. However, cognitive performance has not recovered.

Exactly what does it mean? If you do not get enough sleep during the week, you can not count on your sleep over the weekend to regain your focus and attention. The only way to maintain high levels of this performance is to make sure you get enough sleep every night.

Now, does this mean you do not even have to catch up with sleep? No. If you are already sleep deprived, you should definitely try to get extra sleep. But the best thing to do, whether for immediate or long-term performance, is to give priority to sleeping every night, not just on weekends.

II. How Sleep Works

Sleep Cycle Wake

The quality of your sleep is determined by a process called sleep cycle and wake up.

There are two important parts of sleep and wake up:

Slow wave sleep (also known as deep sleep)

Fast eye movement sleep (fast eye movement represents rapid eye movement)

During slow wave sleep, the body relaxes, breathing becomes more regular, blood pressure drops, and the brain becomes less responsive to external stimuli, making it more difficult to wake up. This stage is crucial for the renewal and repair of the body. During the slow sleep of the wave, the pituitary gland releases the growth hormone, which stimulates tissue growth and muscle repair. Researchers also believe that the immune system in the body is repaired during this stage. Sleeping on a slow wave is crucial if you are an athlete. You often hear about professional athletes like Roger Federer or LeBron James who sleep 11 or 12 hours a night.

As an example of the effect of sleep on physical performance, he thought of a study by Stanford basketball researchers. During this study, players slept for at least ten hours a night (compared to their eight typical hours). During five weeks of extended sleep, the researchers measured the accuracy and speed of the basketball compared to their previous levels. The percentage of shot free shot rose by 9 percent. The firing rate rose three points by 9.2 percent. The players were 0.6 seconds faster at jogging for 80 meters. If you put heavy physical demands on your body, the slow sleep of the wave is what helps you recover.

REM sleep is the mind what is the slow sleep of the body. The brain is relatively quiet during most sleep stages, but during the rapid eye movement stage, your brain is alive. REM sleep is when your brain dreams and reorganizes information. During this phase, your mind will extract irrelevant information, enhance your memory by connecting the experiences of the last 24 hours with your previous experiences, and facilitate learning and nervous growth. Your body temperature rises, your blood pressure increases, and your heart rate accelerates. Despite all this activity, your body moves with difficulty. Typically, rapid eye movement occurs in short bursts about 3 to 5 times per night.

Without slow sleep stages and rapid sleep stages of eye movement, the body begins to die. If you fall asleep, you will not be able to recover physically, weaken your immune system, and your brain becomes foggy. Or as the researchers say, sleep deprived individuals are at increased risk of viral infection, weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, mental illness, and mortality.

To summarize: Slow sleep helps you recover physically while REM sleep helps you to recover psychologically. The time you spend in these stages tends to decline as you age, which means that your sleep quality and your body's ability to recover also decrease with age.

Age-related sleep changes

According to researchers at Harvard Medical School, "As people age, it takes longer to sleep, a phenomenon called sleep apnea, and sleep efficiency - the percentage of time they sleep - less."

Learn how to sleep better by understanding sleep cycle changes and age

Based on my calculations of the above data, the average age of 80 years has a low sleep rate of 62% less than the average age of a 20-year-old (20% of the average sleep cycle vs. 7.5%). There are many factors that affect the aging of body tissues and cells, but it makes sense that if your body gets a slower wave sleep to recover itself every night, the aging process will accelerate as a result.

In other words, it seems reasonable to say that getting a good sleep is one of your best defenses against aging quickly.

The rhythm of the biological clock

What is the sleep and waking cycle dictated by?

Answer: Daily rhythm. Daily rhythm is a biological cycle of various processes that occur about 24 hours.

Learn how to sleep better by understanding the daily rhythm

Here are some key points in a typical 24-hour training course:

6 am Increase cortisol levels to awaken the brain and body

Production stopped 7 am melatonin

9 am peak sex hormone production

10 am mental alert peak levels

Best car format

3:30 pm The fastest reaction time

5 pm highest efficiency of the heart and blood vessels and muscle strength

7 pm highest blood pressure and body temperature

At 9 pm the melatonin production begins to prepare the body for sleep

10 m The bowel movements were quietly suppressed body

2 am the deepest sleep

4 AM Lowest body temperature

Obviously these times are not accurate and show only the general pattern of the rhythm of the biological clock. The exact times of your daily rhythm vary according to daylight, your habits, and other factors that we will discuss later in this guide.

Daily rhythm is influenced by three main factors: light, time and melatonin.

Light. Light is probably the most important rhythm in the rhythm of the biological clock. Staring bright light for 30 minutes or so can adjust the daily rhythm regardless of time of day. The most common is that the rising sun and light in your eyes lead to a transition to a new cycle.

time. Can affect both the time and daily schedule and arrange the tasks of sleep cycle and wake up.

Melatonin. This hormone causes drowsiness and controls body temperature. Melatonin is produced in a predictable daily rhythm, increasing after dark and falling before dawn. Researchers believe the melatonin production cycle helps keep the sleep cycle and wake up on track.

Model 2 - Process to regulate sleep

In 1982, Dr. Alexander Burbley published an article in human neurobiology describing something he called a dual-process model for regulating sleep. This conceptual framework of sleep describes two processes that occur simultaneously to regulate sleep and wakefulness.

Operation 1 is the pressure of sleep. Basically, sleep pressure mounts from the moment you wake up, to bedtime. As you sleep, the pressure drops. If you get a full sleep, start the next day with low sleep pressure.

Process 2 is the wake-up engine, which handles sleep stress and controls the 24-hour rhythm repeated in a wave pattern.

It is important to understand this process because it helps to uncover an important point about sleep in our modern world and learned from the world of sleep Dan Berdy:

For millions of years, humans and our ancestors have evolved to sleep at night (when it is dark) and wake up during the day (when they are openers). However, in the modern world, we work indoors throughout the day, often in the dark areas of the outside world. And then, at night, see the screens and bright TVs. Low daylight lighting, more lighting at night: It is the opposite of natural cycles, and it seems very likely that it may spoil the rhythm of your rhythm and rhythm of the biological clock.

The result of this transformation? Drowsiness and dysfunction throughout the day. We'll talk more in just a minute about how to sleep better, including the actionable steps you can take to solidify your rhythm, but to a large extent: use common lighting habits. Get outdoor exposure during the day, turn off the lights and turn off the screens after dark.

When should I go to sleep?

If you get a recommended 8 hours sleep, is this important when you get it?

"Sleeping when you sleep makes a big difference in terms of the structure and quality of your sleep," says Dr. Matt Walker, head of sleep and neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley.

Walker said the ratio of sleep to rapid eye movement to non-rapid eye movement changed overnight, with sleep control other than rapid eye movement on early-night cycles and the sleep of fast eye movement near the sunrise. This means that late night can lead to insufficient amounts of non-REM sleep. As we discussed earlier, it is extremely important to have healthy amounts of REM sleep and non-REM sleep.

If, how long should you be in bed to get enough of each kind of sleep? Walker says there is a window for several hours, from 8 pm to midnight.

The best time for you, though, will vary.

"Each person has a unique internal chronograph, called a sleep chronotype, which determines the place of measurement from" early bird "to" night owl, "says Roel Ruinberg, a professor of biobiology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, who studies the biological roots of sleep. "We're soaking in. Your crochet style is pretty hereditary.

When choosing your bedtime, try not to fight your physiology. A little better sleep time will vary for everyone, but it is important to pay close attention to your inner watch and what your body tells you. As long as you get 8 hours of sleep recommended, just focus on finding the time that suits you best.

III. How to sleep better

How to fast

Develop a "power cut" ritual before bedtime. Light from computer monitors, televisions and phones can hinder the production of melatonin, which means that your body is not getting ready for the hormones it needs to enter the sleep phase. Specifically, it is the blue wavelength of light that appears to reduce the production of melatonin. Developing a "power cut" routine where you close all electronic devices an hour or two before bed can be a big help. In addition, working late at night can keep your race mind and stress levels high, preventing your body from calming down to sleep. Turn off the screens and read a book instead. It's the perfect way to learn something useful and spend energy before bedtime. (Another option is to download an application called f.lux, which reduces screen brightness near sleep time.)

Use relaxation techniques. Researchers believe that at least 50 percent of insomnia cases are emotion or stress related. Look for outlets to reduce your stress, and you will often find that the best sleep comes as a result. The techniques include daily journaling, deep breathing exercises, meditation, exercise, and keeping the journal of gratitude (Write thankful for each day).

How to improve sleep quality and duration

If you want to know how to sleep better and enhance your performance, there are 3 arms you can "pull" to give yourself a boost.

Intensity

timing

Duration

Density refers to the quality of your sleep. The percentage of sleep time you spend in a slow wave sleep and the sleep of a fast eye movement largely determines the quality of your sleep every night.

Timing refers to sleep time. What time do you go to bed? This factor is important for two reasons. First, if you are in bed at the same time almost every night, it is easier for your body to develop good sleep habits. Secondly, you must have a time to go to sleep according to your daily rhythm.

Duration refers to how long you sleep. This is simple: how much time do you spend sleeping each night?

How can you use these three levers to sleep better?

When it comes to sharpness, the truth is that there is not much you can do. Your body largely manages the intensity of your sleep cycle (how much time you spend in slow wave sleep and REM sleep) for you. Automatically adjusts based on what you need and how much time you spend sleeping. Frequent exercise, intelligence about light habits, and getting proper nutrition will help, but these actions only work to improve the intensity of sleep indirectly.

This is actually good news as it simplifies things for you. Because your body manages the quality of your sleep on its own, you only need to focus on two factors: timing (when going to bed) and duration (how long you are in bed).

If we impose another assumption, then we can simplify the situation more. This assumption is: You wake up at the same time almost every day.

If you wake up at about the same time each day, your sleep will be determined mainly when you go to bed. In general, if you get into bed early, you'll end up sleeping more. Timely and will also improve the duration.

This brings us to this practical hole ...

From a practical point of view, timing may be the most important of 3 levels of sleep. The intensity of your sleep is automatically controlled by your body. The length of your sleep depends heavily on your bedtime (assuming you wake up almost every morning). This means that more consistent earlier bed access is critical to improving the quality and duration of your sleep.

Daily habits for better sleep

Next, let's talk about how to sleep better by harnessing the power of some simple daily habits.

go out. Target at least 30 minutes of exposure to sunlight each day.

Set the lights. When it gets dark outside, turn on the lights in your home and reduce the blue light or full spectrum in your environment. Flux, a free software application for your computer, makes the color of your computer screen adaptive to the time of day, and warm at night and like the sunshine during the day.

Avoid caffeine. If you are having trouble sleeping, the caffeine elimination of your diet is a quick win. If you can not go without a cup of morning coffee, the good rule to consider is "no coffee in the afternoon". This gives caffeine enough time to wear before bedtime.

Stop smoking or chewing tobacco. Tobacco use has been associated with a long range of health problems, and lack of sleep is another problem in the list. I have no personal experience in tobacco use, but I have heard from friends who have successfully quit smoking that Allen Carr's book on smoking cessation is the best resource on the subject.

Use the bedroom for sleep and sex only. Is your bedroom designed to promote good sleep? The ideal sleeping environment is dark, cool and quiet. Do not make your bedroom a multi-purpose room. Eliminate TVs, laptops, electronics, and clutter. These are simple ways to improve the structure of your bedroom selection, so sleep is easier and harder to distract. When you go to the bedroom, go there to sleep.

Natural sleep aids

Playing sports. There are a lot of benefits to practicing listing them all here. When it comes to sleep, exercise will make it easier for your mind and body to take off at night. Moreover, obesity can wreak havoc on your sleep patterns. The role of exercise becomes more important with age. Middle-aged adults reach sleep much better than their overweight peers. One Warning: Avoid exercise for two to three hours before bedtime because mental and physical stimulation can make the nervous system feel softer and harder to calm down at night.

temperature. Most people sleep best in a cold room. The ideal range usually ranges from 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (18 to 21 degrees Celsius).

Voice. Quiet space is key to good sleep. If it is difficult to get peace and quiet, try to control the bedroom noise by creating a "white noise" with a fan. Or use ear plugs (here's a good pair).

Alcohol. This one is a slippery slope. It is true that a bedtime drink - a "night cover" - often helps people sleep. However, while it makes it easy to fall asleep, it reduces the quality of your sleep and delays the REM cycle. So, you fall asleep faster, but you can wake up without feeling comfortable. It is better to improve your sleep through other methods before using alcohol to do the job.

Final thoughts on how to sleep better

Accumulated sleep debt is the barrier between you and optimal performance. If you want to know how to sleep better, the answer is simple but remarkably opaque in our production-obsessed culture: getting more sleep.